And this diversity crops up again in every branch of human activity; in industrial as in intellectual activity, in art as in literature. We look upon the literatures of Greece and Rome as a treasure of inestimable value, almost as the foundation of our culture; and we still recommend them as models to all who wish to learn the difficult art of writing and of speaking with precision, elegance, and clearness. And yet how little the ancients wrote and read compared with ourselves! The press did not exist; paper, now the cheapest of materials, was a rare luxury—the papyrus was a most precious Egyptian monopoly. Consequently, the number of persons who could provide themselves with books was very small, and such persons were found only among the _élite_ of culture or of wealth. The only opportunities of reading the people had were afforded by the public notices, and by the laws engraved on bronze or marble tablets. In those times, there was nothing to correspond in any way at all with the newspapers of to-day. In view of the very scanty numbers of the readers of books, those also who wrote them were bound to be few in number; these could not write much. With but very few exceptions, the works bequeathed to us by the ancients are by no means voluminous. Of all the qualities commonly found in Greek and Latin writers, sobriety and conciseness are the most prominent. These virtues were to some extent the product of circumstances. For in times in which paper was so dear, and every copy of a book had to be prepared specially by an amanuensis, conciseness and brevity were the two qualities of importance to insure the wide circulation and preservation of a book. It was, however, just the circumstance that the ancients wrote so little that enabled them to carry the art of writing to an indescribable pitch of perfection; that enabled them to obtain that clearness, that harmony, that cadence and proportion of phrase, that concentration which has made them the great masters of the literary art for all time. And to-day!—A wolfish, insatiable hunger for printed paper and reading matter is the scourge of our civilisation. Look at the Pantagruelian literary orgies to which Europe and America surrender themselves! Every day brings its daily paper, every week its journals, illustrated or otherwise, every month its reviews and magazines. Then we have the special publications devoted to a particular art, a particular profession, a particular industry, a favourite sport, in number without end. We have, too, the volumes of every kind and quality with which a crowd of publishers congests the book market: novels, poems, books of travel, science, political economy, religion, sport. Who could enumerate all the kinds of books which are published nowadays? Many of these, it is true, do not find readers, but many do; and a certain number, so many readers as to be sold in thousands, in tens of thousands, and to be scattered broadcast all over the world.